


I'm Scared of My Piano

by emullz



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Songwriting, couldn't help myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26809165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emullz/pseuds/emullz
Summary: “How do you usually start?”“What do you mean?”Luke held out his hands and in poofed a guitar. Julie jumped—she’d never get used to that—but Luke was focused on the chord he was strumming, bobbing his head in time. It was slow, and sad, and for some reason it made Julie’s heart beat faster and her breath come uneven.(in between episodes 3 and 4 when julie says "me and luke wrote songs all weekend" i have to admit i felt robbed of some really good moments so i decided to write one myself. basically just a little soft moment between the best songwriting duo)
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 40
Kudos: 307





	I'm Scared of My Piano

**Author's Note:**

> this show kind of caught ahold of me and refused to let go, so. here's this. title is based off a song maisy stella posted to her instagram that you should all go listen to, because it's exceptional!
> 
> hope you enjoy the fic:)

Julie stood in front of her mirror, tugging on the hem of her sweatshirt. It was big, and frumpy, and it kind of made her look like a lemon. But what was wrong with that? It was Saturday, the only people who were going to see her were her family. Well, her family and the annoying ghosts that lived in her garage, but they were _ghosts._ She shouldn’t be dressing up for them. Not even if they happened to be cute ghosts, not even if they were good songwriters with cute smiles who always seemed to wear shirts that, for some reason, had no sleeves, and what was that even—

“You look like a lemon,” Carlos said, darting past Julie’s bedroom door.

“You little- get back here!” Julie shouted, chasing him into the hallway. The two of them thudded down the stairs, Carlos skidding on the hardwoods and barely staying on his feet as Julie slowly gained on him. As they rounded the corner to the kitchen, Julie was faced with the question she always had to face when her little brother was annoying: what did she do when she caught him?

Luckily for Carlos, Julie only managed to catch up to him when he threw himself into his seat at the breakfast table. “Morning,” called their dad, prodding at bacon with a spatula.

Julie swatted Carlos on the back of the head after making sure her dad was fully focused on cooking. Then she remembered that what he was doing probably wasn’t cooking, and she joined him at the stove to make sure breakfast would be edible. “Dad?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“You’ve got to turn it over.”

“Right, yeah. I was just about to do that.”

Julie wrinkled her nose, refusing to even imagine how anyone was going to force down the food her dad was planning on serving them. Then again, Carlos would eat pretty much anything, and it would be nicer to her dad if she just left the kitchen now. That way she wouldn’t have to pretend to eat something disgusting, and he wouldn’t have to see right through her and realize he’d made something completely unedible.

“Listen,” Julie said, grabbing an apple out of the bowl on the counter, “I’m gonna go mess around in the studio.”

Her dad finally looked up from the skillet, concerned. “You don’t want breakfast?”

Julie waved her apple in the air. “Brain food!”

“Okay.” He squinted, looking Julie up and down. “You look very comfortable. And sunny, like a- “

“Don’t say lemon.”

Carlos didn’t even try to hold back his laughter. Their dad looked between the two of them and then went back to the bacon, which he still hadn’t flipped. Julie was almost out the door when he seemed to remember that there was something he was supposed to say: “Don’t forget your homework, okay?”

“I’ve got a year’s worth of music homework to catch up on first,” Julie said, shutting the door behind her before anyone had the chance to respond.

It was true, she realized as she walked across the porch and down to the studio, this was the first time she’d be writing in a year. Sure, she’d been playing music again, and that was great. That was like breathing in again, filling herself with air so she was light and bright again. But writing was different. Writing was output, writing was opening up and putting the heavy stuff out there for everyone to hear. Writing was messy.

The boys were waiting for her when she opened the doors, still managing to look like they’d just woken up even though Julie wasn’t technically sure if they even slept, anymore. Alex was the only one who was even remotely ready for the day, buckling his bag over his shoulder and straightening his jacket.

“How come you wear a bag?” Julie asked. “What do you have to carry?”

Alex frowned, undoing the zipper and looking inside to find nothing. “I don’t… I don’t know,” he said. “Now I feel stupid.”

“Don’t feel stupid, buddy, you look great,” Luke said, and then his tone sharpened when he turned to Julie. “Good morning to you too.”

Julie stuck out her tongue at him. Luke opened his mouth to respond, but Reggie was tugging on the bottom of his leather jacket and making the buckles jingle, a familiar look of confusion on his face. “No, that’s a good question! Why do I need a jacket? Am I gonna get cold? Do ghosts get cold?”

Luke patted him on the shoulder, shooting another annoyed glance at Julie. “Leather jackets are cool.”

Reggie let out a breath, relieved. “Leather jackets _are_ cool.”

“How do we know they’re still cool?” asked Alex, polishing the surface of the piano to try and get a look at his haircut. “They could’ve gone out of style, any of this could. We could be dressing like idiots and we wouldn’t even know.”

Julie snapped her fingers, and all three boys turned to look at her at the same time. “I have an idea! Why don’t you guys take the day and go walk around Hollywood, see what people are wearing. There’s great street fashion here, I think you’ll learn a lot.”

Reggie and Alex seemed excited at the prospect, but once again, Luke was pouting at Julie. “What about me?”

“Oh, you’re beyond help,” Julie said, grinning when she got a laugh out of Reggie and Alex.

“Hey!”

“Plus, I need you here,” Julie said, making her way over to the piano. “These songs aren’t going to write themselves.”

Luke’s expression softened into a smile that he tried to hide by shooing the other boys out of the studio and out onto the streets, one hand on each of their backs as he practically pushed them out the door. “So,” he said, once they were gone, “we’re writing?”

Julie sat down at the piano and shook out her hands, hoping that her nerves would shake out her fingers, too. This was always the part where she choked. For the past year she’d done this hundreds of times. She’d taken the deep breaths and sat down at the piano, told herself she could do it, that she would feel better when she’d gotten her emotions out and written something. And then, every time, she ran away.

“Julie?” She looked up to see Luke standing next to her, leaning his elbow on the piano. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Julie said, putting all her effort into the words like if she said them with enough conviction, she could make them true. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“How do you usually start?”

“What do you mean?”

Luke held out his hands and in poofed a guitar. Julie jumped—she’d never get used to that—but Luke was focused on the chord he was strumming, bobbing his head in time. It was slow, and sad, and for some reason it made Julie’s heart beat faster and her breath come uneven.

“I work best with the melody first, and then I fit in the words,” he said, “but some people like to work the other way. Words first, then find the notes.”

“Oh.”

Luke put down the guitar, the movement of the strap mussing up his hair just a little bit. “I’m cool with either, that’s why I asked. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“No, it’s not that,” Julie said, closing her eyes. “When it was me and my mom, we usually started with a feeling? But right now, I think I’m just- I’m really scared.”

Even though he was weightless when he sat down on the piano bench, Julie could feel him next to her. “It’s okay,” he said, but Julie shook her head.

“This is something we did together, you know? If I was ever feeling something big, she’d help me figure it out by writing about it. She always said songwriting is the best way to talk about emotions.” Julie could remember the way her mom’s hair tickled her fingers when she bent down to make a note on the sheet music, so well her hands twitched on her lap. “What if I can’t get it right, without her? What if I try to write about what she means to me and it comes out wrong?”

“Hey,” Luke said, and his voice was so soft he was almost whispering. Julie had to go quiet to listen to him, slow her breath so her heartbeat wasn’t so loud in her ears. “The feelings don’t have to be big.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wrote a song called My Name is Luke,” Luke said, and Julie couldn’t help but let out a little laugh.

“That’s a ridiculous name for a song,” she said, and Luke nodded emphatically.

“You’re right, it is! It was a ridiculous song, too. It was all about how I wanted to see what it would be like if my name was something different, like Kyle or Gregory, and how I didn’t think I’d like it.” Luke lifted up the lid of the piano, and Julie could see all the keys spread out in front of her, waiting. “What I mean is if you’re not ready to write about the big stuff, don’t. It’s okay to use the little emotions first.”

She took a second to think about it. When she thought about her mom, were there little emotions? Could there be? There was the big one, of course, the one sitting in her chest like a lost tooth she couldn’t stop poking with a metaphorical tongue. That was all the love she had for her mom, the love she didn’t know what to do with that turned into the ache and pain of missing her. But when Julie finally let herself acknowledge it was there, she could feel something else. Around it, underneath it, there it was. The little stuff.

There was laughing at Carlos’s horrible impressions, there were the rides home after school, there was family breakfast on Sundays after Church with the bacon sizzling on the stove and Julies mom standing next to her at the stove, teaching her how to flip it at just the right moment. Julie thought about what her mom would say to her when she was struggling with something. When she tried over and over to do something and couldn’t get it right.

“You’re so close, _mija_. You’re right on the edge. Just keep trying, and you’ll make something great.”

Julie set her hands on the keys. She turned to Luke and she didn’t even have to tell him that she had it. He already knew. His face cracked wide open with a smile, matching exactly what Julie was feeling when she looked at him. Her fingers pressed down and a note rang out, the first note of a melody that Julie could feel was going to be something important. She wasn’t sure yet about great, but that was what Luke was there for.

She was about to thank him, but there was something in the way he was looking at her that made her think he already knew. It was the same something that made heat rise in her cheeks, that made her wish he wasn’t a ghost so maybe there was a possibility, any possibility, of him feeling the same way towards her.

Instead, Julie turned her gaze back to the piano and hit another note. “Listen to this,” she said, and that was it. Neither of them stopped listening until the whole weekend went by, and Julie felt as sunny and glowing as her sweater. The grief was still there, snug in her chest in its tight little knot, but all around it Luke had helped her put music, and that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> don't usually write recklessly like this anymore but this all happened in the span of an hour and i had to get it out. this show is great i've listened to the soundtrack like 90 million times and i won't stop anytime soon. 
> 
> this is just a nice moment between julie and luke that i feel like we should have gotten in the show!!! because julie and luke actually writing together is something we deserve. anyways would love for y'all to leave any kudos or comments, they make my day, and if u want to chat with me back n forth i have a tumblr (also emullz) that i'm actually still active on, believe it or not. would love to freak out about our favorite himbos and their fearless and perfect leader julie molina. 
> 
> thanks for reading<3


End file.
